How to increase your focus and productivity

How to increase your focus and productivity

In today’s world full of various distractions and information overload, it is very hard to stay focused and productive. Our attention spans are getting shorter, but there is a way you can improve this.
Yes, it’s true our mind likes to wonder and it can be very challenging to stay focused. That’s because our nervous system is constantly processing, reconfiguring, and reconnecting many connections in our brain every moment. This is simply our nature. However recently people are getting even more distracted. Our focus and productivity are getting lower. The way we live our lives today, amount of information we’re exposed to and technology we use can lead to overload. Distractions are everywhere and they are very frustrating. Some studies indicate that people who work in the office, on average shift their focus from 10 to 20 times per hour. This all influences their overall performance. Our current states are only a small fraction of what it could be.

Ways to enhance your focus and productivity
Life is too short and we all want to live it to its full potential. We want to use our time wisely and productively. So, there are few things that we need to consider in order to do so. We need to cultivate the healthy lifestyle and organize our time properly. In order to better organize your time and be more productive, we recommend ”Pomodoro method”. This is technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are named Pomodoros.

The healthy lifestyle includes healthy nutrition, physical activity, and healthy mind.
Healthy nutrition is very important for your body. It directly affects your energy level and it can also have an effect on your mood and productivity. Therefore you need to optimize your food intake. Physical activity is also very important. Physical exercise also has a very strong impact on your mood and your energy levels. There are many scientific proves which confirm these claims for both of these categories. But there is also one more category which is also very important, especially for your focus and productivity. That is your mind and if you lack focus and concentration that means it needs to get back in shape. You need to build your mental muscle. You must start slowly and moderately and then built upon that. It’s very similar to physical fitness, first, you start with the moderate activity and then you slowly increase the intensity of your workout. So start out with a pretty easy goal and work your way up from there. Here are some exercises that will help you with that.

Exercises for your mind
Attention experts recommend practicing mindfulness through the day. Dedicate 10 to 20 minutes per day for mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is simply focusing completely on what you’re doing, slowing down, and observing all of the physical and emotional sensations you are experiencing in that moment. It can be done while performing any everyday activity for instance at lunch or in the morning while washing your teeth. It isn’t really that complicated and it can help you push back against distractions as they arise.

You can also try with attention training therapy (ATT). ATT develops a fitness of the mind so that one is more able to take control over runaway worry, rumination, and a focus on threats that might worsen depression and anxiety. ATT interrupts repetitive patterns of negative thought and helps regain flexible control over thinking.

Attention training therapy consists of three components: (1) selective attention to individual sounds, (2) rapid attention; switching among sounds, and (3) divided attention to more than one sound at a time.

These inputs should help you get back on the track, be more focused and productive.